OOTP development thoughts and musings

[McSweeny]

well i was just over at the .400 boards and read the thread where SkyDog got Markus to fix the rotation coding and i got to thinking. Markus is German right? And from the little quirks in the game it could be said that he doesn't understand the game the way that those who watch every game and follow the sport day in and day out. Now don't get me wrong, i'm not faulting him. He's done one hell of a job with OOTP, and from what i can gather OOTP5 is going to be pretty good.

But...

i think it would be great if he had a development team of like 5 guys who know baseball in and out and would be able to work with him on things like the doubles/triples rating and such. In my opinion that is what is sorely lacking from OOTP. I think it needs the insight of a few die-hards. I know it may be too late in the development cycle for OOTP5 but i think this is something that is a must for any future versions of the game

[Rich1033]

I agree 100%

OOTP already has a ton of features and options. The biggest opportunity to improve the game would be cleaning up the rating system to make it more true to the sport.

I agree with the opinion stated by CraigSca in this thread. I would be thrilled if those ideas could be implemented into OOTP6.

[Tarkus]

Does anyone know Marcus well enough to suggest this? My only concern would be that the group soley focus on the realism aspect of things and not worry at all about features. Fix the things that would make it more of an accurate baseball sim first, then worry about the features.

Tarkus

[MizzouRah]

I know it may be too late in the development cycle for OOTP5 but i think this is something that is a must for any future versions of the game

A MUST? I don't agree with that at all. You really should play Diamond Mind baseball if your a die hard baseball fan and want things 99.9% accurate.

Don't take this as a fanboyism, I think your idea is a good one, but not to the extent of not buying it if it's not implemented. I'm sure Steve, Joe, Scott, and the beta team are helping Markus with issues such as these.

Ootp has come a long way since its inaguration, once the engine is satisfactory for most, maybe Markus can clean up some of the German-American nuances?

Joe or Scott, what are your thoughts on this?


Todd

[McSweeny]

i simply said i think they game should work on getting more realistic. This is going to be fifth version of the game. And while in many ways it's an incredible game, it could stand to be improved greatly in other areas.

There was another thread recently that talked about K/BB ratios and such and how OOTP is unrealistic in this regard. These are the kind of things that i would like to see cleared up. Along with the double/triple ratings. As of now you can get pretty good stats and the game is enjoyable to a degree. But if there was a group of people who really "know" baseball helping Markus out, it could be a truly great game

[ScottVib]

Todd,

You've got it right, Markus isn't going it alone when it comes to features, ideas, and trying to get the game right. The beta team, myself, Steve, Joe, and the other members of .400 Studios all have Markus's ear as far as working on the game.

I make a point of traveling to the various boards (including this one) to try and get all the opinions for improvements to be made to the game, several ideas from this board have made their way to emails that I've sent to Markus directly... (for example had SkyDog not moved his post to the OOTP4 board for me to grab Markus and pass on the link, I would have simply cut and pasted it into an email).

We are always looking to improve things, and while not everything people want will make it into the next version, this stuff does get looked at and included when possible, when further work is needed then Steve and/or I end up doing somemore research. For example, Steve is doing some stat/rating player creation research right now..

We know there is more work that needs to be done to OOTP, in V5 and in future versions to make it the ultimate game that we all would like, and we are working to reach that level.

If you have ideas, concerns, or other comments I'd invite you to pass them on to me: [email protected]

edit - grammar

[McSweeny]

that's great to hear Scott, i'm glad all our clamouring isn't going unheard

[TestAmenT]

I agree....OOTP is one great game...but its too much of the same thing everytime. There is much room to improve on the Sim/AI engine....I'm going by OOTP3 and OOTP4...I haven't got to play OOTP5 yet...(obviously)...Markus has said that the AI engine is completey new and re-built...so it might be a lot better.

I already like the things he has implemented in OOTP5...like the stars on the Transaction screen...the Starting Rotation setup...and the overall look of the interface.

I still don't know about the buttons at the bottom of the screen though...I prefer the menu system ala OOTP3/4. I guess if everyone says its better...then it will be better.

Can't wait till March.

[wbonnell]

"Optional role-playing element in Manager Mode - date women, marry and build a family, and if you are lucky, maybe raise a son with baseball skills who can enter the draft pool when he's 18-22 years old. Just be careful with your wife - a divorce is expensive!"

This is a terrible idea. Why not build a reasonable AI or get the baseball "stuff" right before they add fluff like this?!

[MizzouRah]

that's great to hear Scott, i'm glad all our clamouring isn't going unheard

I agree.


Todd

[FBPro]

Taken from another thread but regarding an on topic for this thread...

Ksyrup
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I agree. Markus has indicated that he coded the family thing in no time at all. I don't care one way or another, although for a casual/first-time observer of the series, one might get the impression that he is concentrating on the wrong things at the expense of more important ones.

But I don't think that was the case here. I think it was simply a mechanism by which he could bring a bunch of "Jr.'s" into the game. I think this will help with the immersion factor in Manager Mode, if 20 years into the game, you see your son in the amateur draft. I like the idea of that, personally, and since it took no time at all, what the hell?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally posted by Tarkus
Does anyone know Marcus well enough to suggest this?

I know that this sort of approach was suggested, quite vigorously in fact, for a previous incarnation of OOTP. I leave you to judge for yourself to decide how much it was heeded.

That said, having read Scott's comments below, I'll now join everyone else in hoping that the very wise advice is followed for OOTP5.

[Anrhydeddu]

This is a terrible idea. Why not build a reasonable AI or get the baseball "stuff" right before they add fluff like this?!

For the same reason astrology was added in FOF4.

[HornedFrog Purple]

Originally posted by Anrhydeddu
For the same reason astrology was added in FOF4.

Of course the difference being that one has a direct impact on the simulation itself (to what degree is under debate) and the other has none (unless your "kid" turns out to Babe Ruth or something).

That reeks of fluff.

[korme]

He took the women/cars/houses out of manager mode. He just liked the kid idea, so that stays!

OOTP5 is going to kick some ass.

-Shorty
Fanboy

[McSweeny]

Originally posted by HornedFrog Purple
Of course the difference being that one has a direct impact on the simulation itself (to what degree is under debate) and the other has none (unless your "kid" turns out to Babe Ruth or something).

That reeks of fluff.

though one could make the argument that the astrology is just fluff as well.

[wbonnell]

Originally posted by McSweeny
though one could make the argument that the astrology is just fluff as well.

One could also argue that broken or poorly implemented features from past version should be fixed or enhanced before adding this fluff. He certainly isn't targeting the hardcore baseball fan.

[HornedFrog Purple]

Yup there is absolutely no way to prove that astrology has a symbiotic relationship with team chemistry. None whatsoever. It would have been more hip to call it favorite TV show, favorite music etc. It's all meaningless.

I'll do an about face. Forget about the engine, just work on more of this kind of thing, its obviously the selling point.

I truly hope OOTP5 does kick ass. I really hope someday it can kick mine in single-player and not have me shelve it after winning year-after-year ad nauseum. I will get it and see, maybe it will surprise me.

This is course is the same argument against FOF, the difference being I am not flooded with extraneous, meaningless information that makes me feel "immersed" in my triumphs.

[McSweeny]

Originally posted by HornedFrog Purple
Yup there is absolutely no way to prove that astrology has a symbiotic relationship with team chemistry. None whatsoever. It would have been more hip to call it favorite TV show, favorite music etc. It's all meaningless.

I'll do an about face. Forget about the engine, just work on more of this kind of thing, its obviously the selling point.

I truly hope OOTP5 does kick ass. I really hope someday it can kick mine in single-player and not have me shelve it after winning year-after-year ad nauseum. I will get it and see, maybe it will surprise me.

This is course is the same argument against FOF, the difference being I am not flooded with extraneous, meaningless information that makes me feel "immersed" in my triumphs.

i totally agree, i pray that OOTP 5 is the baseball game that i will play for countless hours into the night and go to bed thinking about... that would be heaven

[FBPro]

Originally posted by wbonnell
One could also argue that broken or poorly implemented features from past version should be fixed or enhanced before adding this fluff. He certainly isn't targeting the hardcore baseball fan.

Though not ALL, but many of the "hardcore" baseball type of gamers are DMB'ers and SOM'ers and would faint at mention of fictional players anyway.

[Draft Dodger]

Originally posted by wbonnell
One could also argue that broken or poorly implemented features from past version should be fixed or enhanced before adding this fluff. He certainly isn't targeting the hardcore baseball fan.

which do you think you'll see more of...

hardcore baseball fans who want to see managers kids show up in the game, or hardcore football fans who have a DB that conflicts with another DB because he's a Scorpio?

[HornedFrog Purple]

Originally posted by McSweeny
i totally agree, i pray that OOTP 5 is the baseball game that i will play for countless hours into the night and go to bed thinking about... that would be heaven

Yeah I am in the same boat. OOTP just teases me no end, its really that close to hooking me in its claws. It gives me Fox Mulderitis.... "I want to believe."

[MizzouRah]

Though not ALL, but many of the "hardcore" baseball type of gamers are DMB'ers and SOM'ers and would faint at mention of fictional players anyway.

Yep, if you want Bonds to get hit with a passed ball on game #111, play Diamond Mind. A career simulator is a different animal altogether. You not only have to account for todays players, but players yet to come.


Todd

[wbonnell]

Originally posted by MizzouRah
Yep, if you want Bonds to get hit with a passed ball on game #111, play Diamond Mind. A career simulator is a different animal altogether. You not only have to account for todays players, but players yet to come.


Todd

I don't necessarily want to replay a past season, but I definitely want a game to accurately simulate baseball (note that I did not say a specific season).

Courting a wife and rearing kids is completely orthogonal to building a baseball team. It is certainly a challenging activity in its own right, but I do enough of that in my real life. Why do I want to play a baseball game to do that?

[DolaBump]

This actually brings up a point I've been thinking about regarding sports sims -- the actual semi-realistic simulation of a coaching or GM career. This seems to be headed in that direction, though the wife and kids thing is probably a bit extraneous. I would be interested in a game involving moving up through coaching ranks, or GMing or whatever. If nothing else, it would be nice to have realistic career movement within the sport (rather than the hiring/firing models currently used in sports sims)

[Bonegavel]

The scariest part to me about this whole thread is that SkyDog knew about the rotation thing in the first place. Is this a common baseball fact? Interesting that it took version 5 and a comment from SkyDog to have this seemingly fundamental mechanic put into the game.

I don't know baseball (but own OOTP4) and enjoyed the game somewhat, but overall i never felt connected to my players. I never knew who the superstars etc. To .400s credit, if I knew more about BBall, it would have made more sense. But, one would think that the game should indoctrinate us baseball newbies. Just from watching ESPN, I can tell you some of the superstars from real-life MLB, but I can only assume that category leaders are the stars in OOTP5.

This is really a general text-sim complaint.

[Joe Stallings]

but overall i never felt connected to my players

Yep. That's the why the sports sim genre is still such a small little island in the mammoth gaming world. If you look at the game industry as a whole, the most successful titles are those that let you "be someone else" or control your own virtual world. Look at the Sims, GTAIII Vice City, SimCity, RPGs like Everquest and Morrowind, the Tycoon-type games, and so on.

Sports management sims, IMO, have been so focused on accurately modeling statistical output to "real life" data that developers have forgotten that games are meant to entertain. A lot of sports sims just strike me as being more like "work" than being a medium of entertainment. And some past versions of our own (.400's) games are certainly guilty of that as well.

Now, obviously you have to have a fairly large degree of believability in your simulation engine; a baseball sim is about the game of baseball after all. But to me, there is so, so much more to the world of sports than simply what happens after a pitch is thrown or a basket is made. I think the real opportunity for game developers is to expand on this concept of the "game outside the game," a concept that really began when Sierra, et. al. introduced the concept of multi-season play (career mode) and Jim and others added the financial management aspect.

If you become too narrowly focused on the engine, then you really set yourself up as being just a commodity on the game market (case in point, I think DMB, APBA and Strat-O-Matic - all fantastic sims BTW - are really only differentiated by price and customer support, not by features or added value)

One of things we tried to with TDCB was try and establish a connection between the coach (i.e., the gamer) and the game's high school recruits, both through visual and verbal feedback. As goofy as some of the faces are in TDCB, my favorite part of the game is the recruiting, because I can form some kind of representation of this person in my imagination, based on what he looks like, and how he responds verbally to the different actions I take within the game world. This is one area of the game I would really like for us to expand next year, and to not limit interactions to just recruits.

That's why also, in FOF, my favorite part of the game has always been - far and away - the financial model and trading A.I. I found the negotiations with players and coaches to be the most life-like and engaging part of the game; probably, because this is where you really interact with the game "characters." While I do enjoy simulating the games and viewing the output, its the interaction with the game world that really gives me that "just one more turn" feeling that all the best games have.

Sorry for the ramble.

JMS

[wbonnell]

Originally posted by Joe Stallings
If you become too narrowly focused on the engine, then you really set yourself up as being just a commodity on the game market (case in point, I think DMB, APBA and Strat-O-Matic - all fantastic sims BTW - are really only differentiated by price and customer support, not by features or added value)

At the same time, if the game's simulation engine is flawed, the developer has no business adding fluff.

[Anrhydeddu]

If you go with the assumption that no simulation engine can be perfect or modeled completely accurately, at what what point do you (as the developer) say it's good enough? I'm not saying that OOTP is good enough but I agree that if a developer solely develops for the engine at the expense of everything else, than it ceases to become a game (where abstractness is the accepted model) and becomes a labratory simulation.

I reject the argument that things like customization is fluff. This is an arrogant position in saying that there can only be one static way to play that can be used to produce narrowly-defined results. If you think about it, using fictional players is fluff because that has nothing to do with accurately modeling current baseball or football because you are creating a customized set of players that may or may not reflect the conditions of accurately simulating baseball or football.

So I think it comes down to what is the balance between a simulator vs a game? If it is a true simulation, then there is no need for any GM fluff like owners emails, free agency, trading, salary caps, drafting, contract negotiations because that all distract from the business of producing perfectly modeled on-field results. But we do accept that level of fluffness, don't we? Since we do, how far do you go? If we can agree that all non-engine features are there to provide more gamey interaction or immersion, who can determine which of such features are valuable or wasted?

[wbonnell]

Originally posted by Anrhydeddu

I reject the argument that things like customization is fluff. This is an arrogant position in saying that there can only be one static way to play that can be used to produce narrowly-defined results. If you think about it, using fictional players is fluff because that has nothing to do with accurately modeling current baseball or football because you are creating a customized set of players that may or may not reflect the conditions of accurately simulating baseball or football.

Neither customization nor fictional players are fluff. I didn't mean to imply that. Indeed, those features are the core of OOTP- it wouldn't be OOTP without them. But adding features like courting and child rearing to a game that has questionable GM AI, player development models, etc., is pure fluff.

[FBPro]

It's just my opinion but the "hardcore sims"(as we have mentioned them in this thread) bore me to tears.....sure the results are accurate, but the problem is that I pretty much know roughly 6 months in advance how the players will perform with very little variance. Just not much challenge there. I know, I know some folks swear by them and that is fine. I also know, been in many leagues online with them too still about the same I can tell you pretty close how players will do.

I "personally" like the variety that oftentimes comes with a game like OOTP, what you sacrifice in 'accuracy" you make up for in variance and fun.

Just my .02 worth

[Anrhydeddu]

wbonnell: I agree, that was my exact reaction to girlfriends in TCY, astrology in FOF4 and seeing the #1 request for 4.1 is NFL Europe. A developer has to choose what they want in the game, based on market desires and/or personal vision. Much of the debates seem to come from conflicts of what features that are or are not in such a game, and the strengths/weaknesses of them.

[Anrhydeddu]

Originally posted by FBPro
It's just my opinion but the "hardcore sims"(as we have mentioned them in this thread) bore me to tears.....sure the results are accurate, but the problem is that I pretty much know roughly 6 months in advance how the players will perform with very little variance. Just not much challenge there. I know, I know some folks swear by them and that is fine. I also know, been in many leagues online with them too still about the same I can tell you pretty close how players will do.

I "personally" like the variety that oftentimes comes with a game like OOTP, what you sacrifice in 'accuracy" you make up for in variance and fun.

Just my .02 worth

Others here have made the case that such hardcoreness leads to group synergy. Also, others here have made the case that only such little variance and accuracy in the model is the essense of fun.

I have tried to make the case that "fun" should not be narrowly defined. To me, fun comes from wanting to replay the game (or at least continuing to play many season) and in solo historical as well as participating in online leagues. That is why I could never get into FOF/TCY as much as OOTP. But I was told that I am not the right customer for FOF and that wanting FOF to have a much higher degree of variety, customization and immersiveness makes me an outsider.

[McSweeny]

it's not stats the are accurate that i want, you can get those with some tweaking in OOTP. What i'm asking for are stats that are realistic. Big difference. Like has been mentioned numerous times before, i don't want tons of guys striking out 130+ times and hitting .320. I'm not asking that the stats be perfect. I'm asking that the stats do a better job representing baseball

[wbonnell]

Originally posted by McSweeny
it's not stats the are accurate that i want, you can get those with some tweaking in OOTP. What i'm asking for are stats that are realistic. Big difference. Like has been mentioned numerous times before, i don't want tons of guys striking out 130+ times and hitting .320. I'm not asking that the stats be perfect. I'm asking that the stats do a better job representing baseball

Yep. As I've said many times before, OOTP does a poor job of simulating baseball. The game itself- as a strategy game- has a lot of potential (some of it already realized), but if I'm going to buy another version of this game (I have them all), I need to see some real improvements in the baseball aspect of the game. Oh, and clean up the poor grammar- it really is a sore thumb.

[McSweeny]

haha for a minute there i thought you were telling me to clean up my grammar!

there are many aspects of OOTP that i love, but as you say the baseball aspect is lacking. Fix that up and make it harder to put together a champion type team and it could be a great game.

Though i do still think it has some way to go in the overall immersement(sp?) factor. Making feel that connection to not just the players on my team, but all the players in the league. If it could do what CM does for me, god, i'd be playing it for so many hours without sleep

[Anrhydeddu]

Originally posted by McSweeny
make it harder to put together a champion type team

I agree with this but I think this is a holy grail. With all of the work on the engine that Jim has put in, GM AI is still weak. Maybe it cannot be done? I think OOTP has a little further to go in this regard but I still won't expect it to be a challenge without loads of house rules, just like with FOF.

I am thinking now that it probably is a good thing that OOTP4 does not present individual player stats completely accurately (not that I ever noticed any problems). Think about it. If the results are more predictable (i.e., better reflecting their ratings) and combine that with our superior ability to evaluate talent over the AI, wouldn't the game become even less of a challenge than it is now?

[dawgfan]

Anrhydeddu, I don't think the issue is whether the stats perfectly match the ratings; I think we can all agree that doing so would remove much of the fun of the game if things were totally predicatable, and wouldn't be realistic anyway.

The issue is that the kinds of stats that OOTP generates don't conform to what has been shown in baseball to be realistic. The point has been made about high strikeout/low walk/high average hitters. As sabermetrics has shown us, that combination is tenuous and rarely sustainable. Guys like Alfonso Soriano are the rare exceptions that prove the rule. A pitcher with a strikeout to walk ratio in the 1:1 range or worse will not be successful over any extended period of time in baseball.

As has been pointed out in other posts and threads, there are ratings in OOTP that don't correspond to actual real-world baseball skills. There's no such thing as a skill for hitting triples, or even doubles. Those are combinations of a hitters' gap-power, their speed and baserunning aggressiveness, the range and throwing arms of the outfielders attempting to field the hit, and differences in the dimensions and configurations of the ballpark they are playing in.

[Joe Stallings]

There's no such thing as a skill for hitting triples, or even doubles. Those are combinations of a hitters' gap-power, their speed and baserunning aggressiveness, the range and throwing arms of the outfielders attempting to field the hit, and differences in the dimensions and configurations of the ballpark they are playing in.

But who's to say that this rating is not a roll-up of some of the attributes you mentioned?

JMS

[Kevin]

Joe:

Even if that is what it represents, then it's evident that the formula being used isn't working. Someone with E speed shouldn't ever lead the league in triples They can get a few in the right circumstances where a deep outfield and a weak arm let them stretch a double. The slowest runner can get lots of doubles with great bat control like John Olerud. There may sometimes come along a notable exception, but a league shouldn't be populated with these anomalies.

I still maintain that things like bat control and power be used as ratings rather than a simplistic double or triples rating. Some reverse engineering might still allow the game engine to infer these attributes for imported stats rather than the other way around.

Finally, I want to say it's great that you're joining in on these discussions. I am finding that OOTP is becoming somewhat stale for me as the novelty of the new features have worn off and leave me still questioning certain aspects of the game engine and desperately wanting a stronger AI opponent, particularly as it relates to roster management.

For the first time in four versions I will be waiting to see the response to the changes that are implemented before I buy. I realize you need more glitz to attract and keep new customers. I just hope there's something to keep us old fogies around for the long haul. Not to worry, it's your TDCB that has my interest now. It's still a new and fresh enough entry in the market to keep my interest for several months. As it goes through its life cycle, many of the same type issues will arise. Arlie appears to be ahead of where Markus was at the OOTP2 stage on many issues, particularly as they relate to the game engine itself.

Cheers

[dawgfan]

Originally posted by Joe Stallings
But who's to say that this rating is not a roll-up of some of the attributes you mentioned?

JMS

Fair enough Joe - if that's indeed the case then I feel better about the OOTP engine.

Still, I think it's a bad idea to present that rating as a skill by itself. This is something that should be intuited from evaluating your player's power, speed and baserunning abilities. This not only conforms to actual baseball scouting reports, it also allows OOTP to avoid undue criticism of how its' engine works.

[Anrhydeddu]

It all has to be an abstracted rating anyways, regardless what it is called. I think the goal is to present enough information to the gamer to get an idea of the player's comparative value but not enough to be predictable (or calculable). Besides, I thought most gamers play with Reduced Ratings or Talent Only anyways?

[dawgfan]

Originally posted by Anrhydeddu
It all has to be an abstracted rating anyways, regardless what it is called. I think the goal is to present enough information to the gamer to get an idea of the player's comparative value but not enough to be predictable (or calculable). Besides, I thought most gamers play with Reduced Ratings or Talent Only anyways?

Yeah, I'm probably picking at nits here.

I think one of the issues here may be the difference in expectations from hardcore baseball fans vs. casual baseball fans.

The casual fan will care that in general the numbers and outcomes generated by the game conform to their perception of realistic and probably not care so much how those numbers are generated.

The hardcore fan will expect the numbers to not only conform to their perception of realistic, but will expect that the process by which those numbers are generated conforms to a fundamental understanding of how the actual game of baseball works. Additionally, that fan will likely be much more comfortable if the presentation of those numbers and ratings resembles the way in which that information is presented in reality.

General managers rely on combinations of scouting reports that grade a player's ability in a variety of skills and that player's results on the field as measured by a number of statistics. Those skills and statistics used vary from GM to GM of course, but there are fundamental concepts that are widely accepted.

My point about the triples rating is that I don't think anyone in baseball rates a player's ability to hit triples as a skill - rather, they'll look at their power, speed and baserunning ability and scan that player's stats to look at prior performance.

I think with any sports sim, the ability to analyze a player's ability should be done through a combination of skill ratings and statistical performance. The skill ratings should be subject to some amount of inaccuracy, and the actual skill levels should be prone to a fair amount of variability so that actual performance has the same level of unpredictability as in reality.

[Anrhydeddu]

Well written response, dawg. You said the definitive word....Expectations.

[HornedFrog Purple]

What I expect is consistancy no matter what setting I test the sim under whether it be softball on the moon or professional baseball on earth. Anyone who purchases this or any sim would "expect" the same thing I would think.

Or maybe not.

Why should I expect this? Because that is what is has been advertised to be able to do. Consistancy is more important to me than "realism".

[KWhit]

Originally posted by dawgfan
My point about the triples rating is that I don't think anyone in baseball rates a player's ability to hit triples as a skill...

I do think you guys are nit-picking a bit here, especially about the doubles/triples ratings. For instance, the other sports sim I've been playing recently, TCY, has many such strange ratings. I'm assuming FOF has similar ones (haven't played that game in years).

For instance, there are ratings of Yards per pass / Yards per reception. This isn't a SKILL that a player can be rated on. It's a combination of the other skills and the type of offense that is being run.

Even stranger is 3rd down Passing/Receiving/Running, etc. That one just makes no sense to me. Is this supposed to be some sort of clutch rating? I really just don't get it.

And a specific player on my team whose ratings (to me) are very strange. He's a FB whose ratings are this:

Avoid Drops: 3
Reception Frequency: 7
Third Down Receiving: 95

Granted, I haven't been playing this game for long, and I don't have a total grasp on it yet, but I think that if you look hard enough for it you can find strange anomolies in all of our favorite sims.

I wish OOTP was better. Of course. I enjoy the game tremendously, though, as is. And I've found the programmer Markus to be THE most accommodating of any person associated with any game I've ever played. He is always taking people's suggestions and trying to work them into the game. Do I wish it was more difficult? Of course.

I really think most people are focusing too much on the whole get married and have a kid thing. Yeah, it may be a little bit silly. But from what I understand it is a very minor piece of what is new. I'm so excited about the fact that arbitration will be in the game. And I'm hoping that the completely re-vamped AI will help a lot.

Am I a fanboy? Maybe, but I'm just really looking forward to this game.

[wbonnell]

Originally posted by Anrhydeddu
Well written response, dawg. You said the definitive word....Expectations.

So, whose expectation is more important to a text-sim developer? The casual fan or the hard core fan? Aren't text-sim fans by definition "hard core"? It seems to me that casual fans are playing High Heat or Triple Play...

[CentralMassHokie]

Here's my issue with the OOTP sim engine, and this is a place where FOF shines: picking up players who aren't just high rating/high talent players.

For instance, in FOF, you can find a RB who's not an overall great running back, but in your pass heavy offense, he puts up great numbers. Or a safety who you play as a run stopper, but who has no pass coverage skills at all. In FOF those players have value (in some cases, too much value, but value nonetheless).

In OOTP, low talent players rarely have value. Because the micro results (for lack of a better word) don't have much connection to the known sabermetric theories (OBP is a better indicator of run scoring than batting average, K:BB ratio is generally the most important stat for pitcher success, etc), you're forced to look for guys who simply hit well.

One of the joys of baseball is a guy like Jose Hernandez last year. Yep, he struck out nearly 200 times - but he had pop and a walked a good bit. He was probably one of the top 3 NL SS in RC/27 (I didn't go check the stats - I might be off on that). Rarely, however, do players like that end up having value in OOTP.

I'm not sure what model Markus is using to generate his macro results. It does appear to me (and granted, I'm not playing OOTP as much as I had simply because of some of these reasons) that OBP is greatly underrated when it comes to generating runs, which to me, is pretty much an unforgiveable flaw.

As I mentioned in the other read, go through the standings sometime and take a look at the winning percentages compared to the expected winning percentages (Runs Scored^2/(Runs Scored^2 + Runs Allowed^2). In one of the leagues I'm in, I think the last I checked, nearly every team was somwhere between 5 and 10 games off. That just doesn't happen. Last year, I think 6 teams in all of baseball were more than 4 games off their expected. Most teams were within 3 games.

I've seen DMB and Strat-O-Matic mentioned in this thread. Yep, those are the holy grail when it comes to accurate sims. And that's what I want: the best of both worlds. I want sim accuracy, and I want to be able to have an ongoing career. I want to watch the 30th round guy, who I drafted because he had an uncanny ability to get on base, turn into a Jeremy Giambi type and become a valuable player. That just doesn't happen in OOTP right now. The only value you usually get out of the late rounds are middle relievers, simply because the game seems to generate a ton and they're the only players left.

That's what's missing. I don't neccessarily want the boom/bust phenomenon from FOF (though that'd be interesting as well), but I simply want to be able to use my highly paid scout to discern some talent from a guy that everyone else passed up.

On the same lines - imagine a Rule V draft being implemented, and using your scout (exceptional at identifying pitchers) to pick up on a guy who's been a poor performer in the minors with regards to ERA and Wins, but who's K:BB is fantastic, and who's shown a propensity to not give up the long ball. You pick him up, put him in front of your solid defense in your pitcher's park, and all of a sudden all of those balls that used to be singles and doubles are now outs, and you've found a young starter.

Maybe I'm asking for too much. I don't think so, though. Of all sports, baseball has the most research already accomplished. All it takes it a perusal of baseballprospectus.com, or picking up any Bill James' book to get a handle on some of the fundamental statistical models.

By the way - are park effects modeled in OOTP? I know the game pays lip service to them, but I've never really seen any effect, other than the number of HRs hit.

[MizzouRah]

Courting a wife and rearing kids is completely orthogonal to building a baseball team. It is certainly a challenging activity in its own right, but I do enough of that in my real life. Why do I want to play a baseball game to do that?

I don't like that feature either, but I've read it was an easy add-on that doesn't have to be used. I really don't understand why it's in there, but until I see it, I can't say much.

I would think it's hard to make any sports game and make every everyone happy. I often wonder if the 'hardcore' text sports player is a minority and since companies want to make money, they target the majority of players. At least console games went that direction and it seems some are coming back to the 'hardcore' gamer, although most are turning towards sliders or files to alter, and I'm not sure I like it.

Remember when Hardball on the C64 was fun? A small amount of stats, decent graphics, no drafts, no contracts, no sliders, no renaming players, but.... fun as heck.

Maybe games are getting to tedious to play?


Todd

[Joe Stallings]

Couple of things. First, I myself am not all that enamored with the "triples rating." If I were designing a baseball sim myself, I probably wouldn't have that in there. But I would undoubtedly have *something* in there that people would object to. That's just the nature of development.

And I also think a lot of this is simply semantics and presentation. I know that Markus' intention is not to say, in this specific example, "Joe Blow has an innate, God-given ability to hit triples;" instead, the intent is to give the user some cues and background on the player. I mean, even the old board like SOM and APBA games had what could be essentially called "ratings" for players in terms of extra base hits, and these weren't meant to show "skill" but instead "probability range."

As KWhit said, sports sims are chock full of "ratings" that in real life aren't really intrinsic skills. So why are they there at all? I think its because you've got to compensate for the fact these are artifically generated "players," meaning, you don't get the same input that a real-life coach gets by observing and working with a real-life athlete.

So sometimes, for the betterment of the game, you have to take a few liberties with reality. The user is already at a disadvantage due to the absence of information and inputs that are available in "real-life" but not feasible to implement in an artificial simulation. The reason developers will often use these "quasi-ratings" is not because they don't understand the sport, but because they are trying to help the person playing the game make more informed decisions in the context of the game world.

As a side note, wbonnell said, "Aren't text-sim fans by definition "hard core"? It seems to me that casual fans are playing High Heat or Triple Play..."

I have to disagree somewhat. I know a lot of people who log as many hours playing High Heat, Madden, et. al. as do those of us who play text sims. And they take their trade seriously. If you go on to some of the console sites and look at the sports games forums, it might surprise you about the detailed level of discussion involving ball physics, park renderings, pitcher/fielder/batter mechanics, etc. Its just a different breed of "hard-core," with more focus on visual output than statistical output.

To me, a casual gamer is one who is looking for a quick diversion, and I know plenty of casual gamers who enjoy both sims and "arcade" games for that quick diversion. Appealing to hard core vs. casual gamers is not IMO so much a question of "what" features are in a game as much as "how deeply" those features are explored in the game.

Of course, the Holy Grail is the game that has the flexiblity to satistify both crowds. I've rarely seen that done. Maybe Gran Turismo and Microsoft Flight Simulator come close. Any other examples?

JMS